We were standing beside the top of a circular pit, no more that ten meters in diameter, with the crouching figures of one hundred and twenty two comely blue green winged creatures, attending them are two hideous demons, one in human form though scaled like a snake, the other a small black figure with short thick bat like wings.

To our front the wall falls away, and there dejected amid his defeated company is Satan, crouched, his left arm stretched around his drawn up left knee, cradling his right arm and shattered right shoulder, his right leg amputated high up, a portion of bone sticking out of the raw stump like a leg roast in a butcher's window.

A small quantity of dark green blood pooled on the stone below the wound .. past him an agglomeration of three hundred and twenty nine human figures, their group profile suggesting the arboreal physiognomy of a low sturdy powerful tree, its leaves and branches the heads faces and limbs of the fallen, these are the recidivists of Hell.

A straight line catches one's eye on the opposite wall further in past the tombs, a low stone shelter maybe four meters long though only a meter or so high, and twelve hundred mm wide is built onto the almost vertical slope, this is the dwelling of Chablis the Devil of the Darkness.

Higher the slope levels out, and one can perceive in the gloom what looks like a hospital bed with two demon attendants, themselves attended by the green, glowing bearded human figure, of another of the guards of Hell, past them beyond the entrance to another cavern, faintly illuminated in pale phosphorescence the dark billows and strong current of an underground river.

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A flat bottomed craft is against a stone landing, a gaunt straining figure is poling his vessel into the stonework against the fierce pull of the current, this is Charon the Ferryman, the boat is about two thirds laden, with the crouching figures of one hundred and two women in twelve rows of eight then six more.

The furtherest back a commanding and imposing woman of indeterminate age, her black flowing hair with a broad band of silver, giving her a badger like appearance. Read Dodi Smith's description of Cruella de Vil, in her book 101 Dalmatians, surely resembles this lady in Hell with her hundred and one acolytes, Hell is full of similar ironies.

The other passengers each seem to have gone aboard at different times later, the most recent a woman in her fifties her black hair streaked with gray, her bony lezzo's face expressing only anxiety and an immediate readiness for departure, as she and her companions in their turn chant the litany, then the response to the Rosary.

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The landing had another occupant, another guard in a sentry box affair carved into the stone, a young soldierly type dressed in a full length white smock, shoulder length fair hair held by a circlet of some bright metallic substance, armed with a broadsword, he fixed his gaze upon me like I was a candidate for execution and adjusted his grip on the sword.

I had noted that he and his sword seemed more than capable of causing the death of the mummified body on the terrace, and of severing Satan's leg .. Philemon told him to put up the sword,explaining I was on tour, I proceeded to go straight ahead, when Philemon indicates our way is to the right thru an entrance and into another cavern.

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Then downward via a ramp deeply rutted and strewn with boulders, incredibly a large boulder is inching upward, balancing it seemed upon the shoulders of what first appeared to be another stone, the proportion that of a tennis ball and a basketball, the smaller bearing the larger .. read Homer describe the torment of Sisyphus.

Whose task is to convey a large stone to the top of a similar incline, even as the carrier gets the stone so near to the top, does the burden become too much, even for this mighty man .. in physical form a Tom Thumb, yet we know from legend and rhyme TT was a particularly nice guy, Sisyphus never came to this end by being nice.

The weight becomes too much, the stone topples from his shoulders and rolls back down the incline, he chases downhill after it, and catches it where sandy floor of the cavern is rolled flat and the sand has slowed the stone, running he gets behind it and checks its motion, then hoists it upon his shoulders.

He traverses the rolled flat sand and runs up the first third of the twenty meter incline, entering one of many deep ruts in the soil, and the stone appears to be inching steadily upward of its own volition, he emerges where the rut is shallower with the stone firmly upon his shoulders, upward till unsteadily the stone falls from his grasp and rolls back.